Google China or bada Bing Bai(da)du
About three weeks ago Google made public that a massive internet intrusion attack had been directed against them
Google China cyberattack part of vast espionage campaign, experts say - washingtonpost.com. Against their assets in China and G mail, specifically the intersection of google mail with Adobe pdf attachments. One point of these attacks was apparently to gain an idea of the contacts and document distribution networks of Chinese dissidents
A New Approach To China | MetaFilter. This immediately placed presumptive suspicion on elements of the Chinese state. Something about the attacks, their intensity and sophistication caused Google to react strongly
BBC News - Google 'may pull out of China after Gmail cyber attack. To cease voluntarily censoring search results at the instruction and behest of the Chinese government. Further to abandon enterprise activities by Google in China rather than submit to further insidious demands and insidious intrusion
Google, Citing Cyber Attack, Threatens to Exit China - NYTimes.com. It was noted by some that Google wasn't gaining much market share against China's native search engine Baidou anyway. In recent days as this affair played out and the results of Google and various US Agencies examining the attacks came in it seemed that the attack originated at two Chinese Universities
2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com, both with close ties to the Chinese government (in itself no different from most universities), and used code that originated with a single programmer
Chinese programmer fingered in Google attack.
Taken together with China's recommitment to jailing dissidents, it speaks to the emergence and permanence of a largely undemocratic one party state on the world scene. In the same span of weeks Chinese newspaper editor Tan Zuoren known for opposing arbitrary use of state power was sentenced . For the usual vague 'activities against the state charges, but many suspect mainly for researching a story on how so
Editor Reviewing China Quake Deaths Is Sentenced - NYTimes.com many schools collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake and why so many children died. Also A Chinese court also upheld the cruel and abusive eleven year sentence against, Liu Xiaobo, closely associated with the Charter '08 reform movement
Chinese court upholds prominent scholar's 11-year punishment - washingtonpost.com:.
On the international stage China is in many ways fully engaged. China is building a major and modern port facility in Hambatota Sri Lanka. Not only to give itself a deep water port for unfettered trade access in south asia, but also to preclude and circumscribe Indian trade expansion
India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia - NYTimes.com.
There is a discernible cast to China's activities that economist and Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson refers to as the "China First" Policy
Robert J. Samuelson - The danger behind China's me first worldview - washingtonpost.com. Something that may produce as much divergence as convergence even as China adopts forms of a free market economy. The U.S. has had the outlook of a young country. A century of working across its own frontier as industrialization developed. A century of expansion with only an interlude of isolationism existing largely as an example of wrong headedness. The middle kingdom systematically values security, stability and solidity. The idea that if anything is needed or valued outside China raw materials or oil, the object is to organize its being obtained guaranteed and brought back to China. China at the same time is one of the nations singled out for their number of start-ups enterprises and culture of innovation. The fast company five most often mentioned are China, Brazil, Singapore, India, and Israel the subject of an entire book on this
Start-up nation : the story of Israel's economic miracle. China is unique not only for its demographic depth, a vast reserve of human capital but also as a Christian Science Monitor article points out for its "research universities...bottom-up commercial drive, and top-down planning." A focus on "key areas" of technological development.
The concern in this is not that the US is losing ground or falling behind, but that there is the appearance that an autocratic state can produce wealth and well being as easily as a democratic one. Top down or bottom up, industrial policy or laissez fair, order or creative destruction. Its all only a matter of convenience and appearance. Local elites in every corner of the globe will be tempted to rule in the interest of the people but without their interest.
I don't believe that in the end (or for long) an autocratic mass society state can produce happiness. Not by merely substituting wealth for autonomy. the wealth of a nation is important, for creating temporary contentment in a people, but it is not the only thing. If order and wealth, thwart conscience (faith), and justice it will eventual seem less than complete. The reformers seeking a Chinese democracy see it as a human rights issue. The officials of the autocratic state may ease restrictions on knowledge and autonomy gradually and without comment, allowing spheres of informality, if they see it having a causal relationship with wealth. In the same manner that they take concern with the environment when it impinges enough on wellness. Without room for conscience social systems degrade. Wealth tantalizes, shimmering just at fingertips reach, but well-being is a delicate weave of intangibles resting on the ability to order one's own comfort and life, to plan for the future. Wealth fades moves sideways then elsewhere. Fortune withdraws into a stark matter of haves and have nots. Nothing is left but subjugation, domination and the paranoia of a one party state. Colored only by shades of loathing and cruelty.
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